Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The krone, krona, koruna and
sterling are the best alternatives for investors seeking
exposure to Europe, according to John Taylor, founder of FX
Concepts LLC one of the largest currency hedge funds.

“It’s fair to say I’m known for betting against the euro
but that doesn’t mean I’m betting against Europe,” Taylor said
at the Bloomberg FX12 Summit in New York yesterday. “I say what
is going to help these 17-member countries, and the answer is a
weaker euro.”

The euro has fallen 2.9 percent this year against nine
developed-nation currencies tracked on the Bloomberg
Correlation-Weighted Indexes. That is the second-largest loss
after the 5.5 percent decline in the yen. Norway’s krone has
gained 3.1 percent, Britain’s pound advanced 1.2 percent and
Sweden’s krona is 0.6 percent stronger.

Taylor, a perennial euro-bear cited the structural
challenges of the European Monetary Union’s makeup and the
economic outperformance of the U.S. FX Concepts had about
$3 billion under management as of September.

The U.S. was the only advanced economy to have its gross
domestic product forecast for next year raised by the
International Monetary Fund in October.

One of the roles in causing the global financial crisis of
2008 was the imbalances in exchange rates, according to Nemat
Shafik, the deputy managing director of the International
Monetary Fund. She cited the combination of fiscal austerity in
advanced economies amid private deleveraging and global
uncertainty, including the European debt crisis as the main
dampers of global growth.

‘QE World’

The euro has not properly weakened relative to the dollar
because of the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying program, known as
quantitative easing, according to Richard Clarida, global
strategic adviser for Pacific Investment Management Co. The
monetary easing adds additional dollars and may debase the
currency.

“We’re in the QE world that Europe does things that would
weaken the euro and then the U.S. does QE,” Clarida, who is an
economics professor at Columbia University in New York, said at
the conference. “In a world where everyone is doing QE or
trying to avoid the consequences of QE, those factors get washed
out.”